a hungry girl navigating the chicago food scene

Chicago restaurant health inspection fails, 2017 edition

Failing a health inspection test is hardly a death knell for Chicago restaurants. That said, it’s enough to give me pause before I choose to eat there – especially since a report issued by Inspector General Joe Ferguson last year said less than 44 percent of Chicago restaurants are being inspected as often as they should be. So maybe this is something we should all be paying attention to.

To help visualize the city’s restaurant fails, I’ve created a map featuring all the restaurants that have failed inspections in 2017 (delineated in maroon with the skull-and-crossbones icons, since I have a flair for the dramatic). The biggest surprises on this list? Speaking for myself, I was dismayed to see Green Street Smoked Meats, a trendy barbecue place in the West Loop that’s been on my list for a while. Another bummer? The ever-popular Pequod’s Pizza, just a few blocks away from DePaul University in Lincoln Park.

You can check out the map of restaurants – and the Chicago universities nearby – on the map below. All data courtesy of the Chicago Data Portal and Google.